Why Project Management Is Becoming Everyone’s Job

But what sometimes gets overlooked is that more and more senior level professionals are being asked to lead projects as well, especially as AI continues to drive sweeping transformation at all levels of most organizations. And the problem with that is that this group is arguably more liable to be swayed by outdated myths and misconceptions about what project management is and miss the forest for the trees completely.

That's why I've invited the person who has literally written the book on "Becoming The Project Manager" so that we can lay out the brass tacks of how established professionals can use any chance to lead a project as an opportunity to propel their career forward, whether project management remains part of their role or not. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place.

Let's get into it. Okay. Today we're talking about the journey of becoming a project manager in 2026, and why some of the textbook ways of learning the craft aren't really cutting it in today's work context. Specifically, we're going to be diving into the common misconceptions and stereotypes that every accidental PM needs to leave at the door when they get that first opportunity to lead a project.

We're gonna be distilling what really makes a project have an impact above and beyond formal processes, and

I'm gonna be testing a theory that becoming the project manager is soon to be a rite of passage for many professionals, not just folks with project manager in their title. With me today is Stuart Taylor, founder of Influential PMO and author of the new book, "Becoming The Project Manager". Stuart has spent years helping organizations improve delivery capability and helping professionals navigate the messy reality of leading projects in modern workplaces.

His work focuses not just on project mechanics, but on the leadership, communication, influence, and decision-making skills that separate accidental coordinators from truly effective project leaders. Stuart, thanks so much for joining me today.

And honestly, this is something that I really wanna nerd out on because, you know, I was literally tossed into project management at the beginning of my career, and I'm still someone who delivers projects as a member of my leadership team. So I think this is a really important topic to be talking about from a couple different lenses.

A, I wanna talk about it obviously from folks who are entering a career as a project manager, but I'm also gonna add a little bit of an inflection for folks who are already deep into their careers, you know, really well situated in a role, but are suddenly realizing that they need project management skills to take their initiatives forward, to grow in their role, and to succeed overall. So, hope we get to nerd out and share stories. I know we can probably zig and zag.

I know that from the time we spent in the green room as well. But just in case, here's a little roadmap that I've set out for us today. So to start, I just wanted to hit you with a big sort of like audacious question that my listeners wanna get your take on, and then I'd like to take that and just unpack it into three areas.

Firstly, I'd just like to hear about your first day on the job after becoming the project manager and what you would do differently or maybe the same if you were to get a do-over in 2026. And then I thought maybe we could just get really practical about what actually matters when it comes to managing these special snowflake projects that don't necessarily follow all the textbook rules, especially if your project is actually like a big, blobby, amorphous strategic initiative.

And lastly, I'd love to talk about the future of how project management will be different and what we need to change about how we teach it to keep it relevant, nimble, and useful. How does that sound to you?

Or was it the first time that I actually had project manager as part of the job title and I knew going in, I am project manager? There, there are so many variations of this, and that's probably an experience that people in your audience can relate to, where they found themselves managing a project and sometimes haven't even been told, "This is what you're

doing." And in the case where the first time it came along, and it was, "We need you to go and do this," it was to set up an office for an organization, and I went and did that. That's a project, isn't it?

There were all of those kind of implications, and there was none of the governance, no support or anything like that. Managing a project without realizing I'm managing a project. Then there's the time when I'm actually in an organization, and this gets covered in my book, Becoming the Project Manager, where it's my first proper project environment where I am delivering a project, but it's part of a, a larger work stream towards a program.

And I was the only person in the team who'd done any kind of formal training on project management by then because, by that point, I'd made the gap. I'd realized there was a success there, and I, I wanted to build on it. And I expanded my knowledge, learned about Prince2, which is the UK qualification for project management. It's not the only one anymore, but it was at the time. It's very similar to PMP in how it's regarded. That opened the door for me to get into this organization.

I was managing a project, and very soon I realized that what I took as being the absolute best way to go about doing a project, this very strict formal process, which is scalable, it's, to be fair, it's scalable There were gaps in it, and I was failing by falling into the gaps, gaps like communication, influence, leadership. Those sorts of things just hadn't been established yet. I hadn't developed those skills yet.

And then the story in the book is how I progress from that point, moving forwards, struggling severely at times, sometimes getting it right. You know, it's not an entire book of failures. It's a story of gradual progression with setbacks until I meet a turning point in the form of a mentor who the book's dedicated to because- Ah, nice without him, we would not be having this conversation today.

And there was a turning point there in my career where I started to progress more steadily towards a sense of calm authority, which represented the end state of my journey in becoming the project manager.

I just wanted to hit you with a bit of a spicy question to set the scene, and maybe I'll take a running start at it as well because it ties into a lot of the things that you've been talking about. In my circles, we've been talking a lot about informal and accidental project managers exactly as you say, right? Folks that have been asked to lead projects without having had any formal training in project management and just being expected to figure it out.

And on one hand, this has probably been happening for some time. It's how I got in. It's how you got in as well. I'm sure it's been happening since the dawn

of projects being a thing. But also, on the other hand, some people are saying that it's happening more and more, and some are also saying that there are fewer and fewer titled project management roles in the workforce. So my big question is this, is project management on its way to becoming a side-of-desk skill set rather than a dedicated role in our AI-imbued future of work? And if so, what will be different about the way professionals learn project management compared to how we learned it?

Even if the part where you're managing a project disappears at some point on your career path, the lessons in engaging with people through the whole organization, learning to anticipate what could go wrong and not being surprised when it does- … learning how to do horrible things like project financials and track costs, deal with suppliers, organize RFIs and such, all of these are useful, transferable skills.

So even if you find yourself being given a project And you're not a project manager, but you're told, "Try to fit this in and do this as well." Try to learn how to do it properly. You don't have to go all the way in, and it doesn't mean departure from your career. The book ends at the point where I move from being a project manager into becoming a PMO, which is going to be the sequel book.

And I've spent so much time in the last, just over a decade now, helping people who never expected to see project management appear on their CV. I've helped lawyers to deliver projects. I've helped designers. I've helped underwriters. I, I've helped all sorts of people. Anybody can do it, and the big challenge that they face initially is they get given this project, and they get told, "Well, this is just a small project," which is the most deceptive thing anybody can ever tell you.

It's the most dangerous thing anybody could tell you. If you hear those words coming from a boss, you need to be a little bit worried. But I've helped them to navigate things like corporate governance, where they've got to do things like status reporting, and they don't understand why they've got to do a status report.

And it's just a box-ticking exercise, and they don't realize that when they're making a half-hearted effort, they're projecting that upwards to the most important decision-makers in your organization, and you are telling them something about yourself that you really shouldn't be telling them. So all of this is really important, and I try to get this across to the people who are in that position. You need to take this seriously. Learn how to do this properly.

It won't take you very long, and even if it is, as they say, just a short project to do on, on the end of your desk and you're going to get to the end of it soon, fine. But at least learn to do it right and embrace it fully, and it will be rewarding. So I hope people in that situation do take that skill set.

But I still believe there'll be a dedicated project manager role somewhere out there because there are some changes that require dedication, that require people to be absolutely 100% just a project manager. That's where the mentor came in for me. He was the first person who was a dedicated project manager first.

Everyone else I've dealt with before had done project management as part of their job, and he was the first dedicated one who could go into any environment and deliver any kind of a project, and that was a huge turning point for me. So if you're in a position where you're a new project manager or maybe an undefined project manager- Sorry.

Maybe normally you would just be working in, you know, your team, your department, your silo, but oftentimes these projects, you know, bring together these, not to say ragtag, but c- you know, sometimes ragtag cross-functional teams, cross-departmental teams. You're gonna learn things about the business. You're gonna learn really fast why that status report is actually important. And you're gonna have visibility, but also you're gonna get visibility.

And in other words, people are looking at you because this project presumably matters if they're dedicating resources to it. And as much as you could be like, "Well, you know, nobody's really given me the tools. I'll just make it up as I go, and it's just a simple project.

It should be fine," I like that take of actually, maybe it's an opportunity to learn to do it right, not just from people who have been making it up as they go along, but actually from people who have made it their art form, have made it their craft, have made it their specialty, so that at least you're learning that, doing your project well, and reaping the rewards from it because it's good PR when a project goes well.

It's potentially bad PR when a project doesn't go well, no matter how big or small.

You are their agent in the organization, delivering the change on their behalf that they don't have the, either the time or the project management skills, or maybe the interest to go and do themselves. You are their agent, so you're their representative in the organization, and that means you could be the last person who's coming through the door, and you could be the CEO's agent in the organization. What you want isn't what you want, it's what the CEO has ordered via you.

You're their voice in the organization. You have to take this seriously, and that's for established project managers as well. Don't overlook that.

Whereas every project in some way, shape, or form is probably an opportunity to be that agent, to be seen as that agent, to perform as that agent, and to actually benefit, whether or not you continue to manage projects, to show that you have what it takes to be that, you know, the left and right hand of the organization in terms of strategic execution, even if it is actually a small project.

Which actually, I wonder if we can return to that because, you know, I think coming back to what you had said about, you know, your start and your multiple starts in as a project manager until finally you're, you know, the project manager, formally trained, formally titled.

But when that does happen in the early days, that first time something drops into your inbox and it's "Could you just do this simple thing?" What is something that people should do, and maybe even should not do, when they get that email that is being described

as a small, simple project? Or maybe it doesn't even have the word project. How do they identify, yes, this is an opportunity to do project stuff, and what can they say or do to make sure that it's not an oversimplification of something that's actually much more complex and still approach it in a way that appreciates that complexity?

So if somebody comes to you with a small task, and it may be a project, maybe it isn't, and here's the part where it's a useful transferable skill, always nail down exactly what it is that success looks like and exactly what those requirements are.

Still, challenge it because in the end, if things go wrong, if there's a misalignment… Give you an example I worked with a project manager who had just moved over into the project manager role. It was a short-term project to do a, it was a res- response to a customer complaint system where they would get an SMS message back to say, "Yes, yeah, we, we've received your complaint." That was the project. That's how it was described. Didn't capture requirements, didn't sign it off with everybody.

Got it to the point where it was almost complete and they were doing final testing when somebody in the steer co then mentioned, "And what happens when the customer replies back to that?" It's oh, not one-way SMS, two-way SMS. Everyone just assumed suddenly that was always the standard, that was always what was expected. And I can't begin to tell you the level of panic and stress that caused that project manager.

Not just to stave off the people and, you know, confirm that their complaint has been received, but open a line of communication.

got this." But on day one, if you're, like, really freaking out about trying to have a

stance on something, trying to push back a little bit, what's the sort of smartest way someone can learn to do that on the fly or prepare to do that when it's a really uncomfortable thing for them?

I guess really what I would always encourage people to think about in that situation is actually take a deep breath for a moment, slow things down a little bit. You don't have to jump in straight away whilst you're in a state of anxiety. If you notice your voice cracking as you're having that conversation, you might just be a little bit too stressed right then, and you might need to just say to them, "I have some concerns about this, but let's revisit this."

And give yourself a d- bit of a breathing space for you to at least collect your ideas if that's an option. But ultimately, you need to think about what the end state is supposed to be like, and the end state with a plumber who's left you with a dripping radiator is not to have a puddle underneath your radiator. So everything you do to get to that state is acceptable. That's legitimate. It's a legitimate argument. Plumbers should not leave it that way.

Your boss should not ask you to do something that's unethical, say, or illegal, and I've had that situation in the past. I've been asked to create… It's a very sensitive topic now looking back, but it was to create a database that would have potentially captured people's information without them knowing it. And the law in the UK had been changed one year before then to say you couldn't really do that, or at least it made it very, very clear you couldn't do that.

And I had to have that conversation, and I did it respectfully. And I said, "Look, I think there's an element of this that you're not aware of, and it's a part that could land you personally in an awful lot of trouble." "So this is not an option that's available to us." And I had to have that explanation as … And this was a conversation, it's not even in my book. It's, it would be so, so early.

It's one of those conversations that I'd honestly, I'd actually forgotten until you just brought up this scenario. So there you go, the lost chapters I'll have to write.

If they're not, it's an, it's a bit of a cop-out answer for me to say, but that tells you an awful lot about the organization you're in and whether you might want to consider being there.

It is pausing enough to, you know, make your emotional approach not confrontational, and then having a conversation about the outcomes. And I think that's … I wish I had been told that on day one, to be like, "Listen, it's about getting the best outcome. That's the goal. You're gonna have to have conversations that are uncomfortable. It's not about ego. It's not about confronting someone. It's not a fight. It's a discussion to navigate through to the best result based on what the goals are."

And I think that is a really strong sort of approach for anyone at any level, I guess I should say, because I've seen senior managers do this as well. They're like, "Oh, I guess I have to," you know, to your earlier point, "be the lackey who does these task lists and, you know, do the project, and I have no authority.

But also, if somebody doesn't follow the plan or steps out of line, or if I think something's wrong, I gotta go yell at them and, you know, be this strong force of command and control." You know, it doesn't work.

You don't have to access that, because the danger of accessing aggression to do is firstly, it makes you a very difficult person to work with in the long term, but also there's the risk that you could easily run out of control and into anger, and then if you lose control of yourself, then you lose control of everything. And people have a memory. They remember things like this. So be conscious of the fact that, am I having to tap aggression to have an assertive conversation?

And secondly, it's related to that. The ways that we assert ourselves, the way that we hold our ground, the way that we argue, we tend to learn so much of that from our parents or any of our upbringing or the people we're around in our formative years. So maybe sometimes have a look at yourself and see, am I turning into my dad? Am I turning into my mom? And this is where having help from mentors is really useful, especially if you get to work alongside of them as well.

Have a role model at work and see how they handle these kind of situations, and you'll grow through that way. Say something like now, was it you, you're the sum of the seven people you spend the most time with, something like that, or you're the average of them. Your behavior will adapt to what the other seven people are like. Right. Right. Surround yourself with calmly assertive people, and you'll be calmly assertive, too.

It's definitely, you know, going to be an area where you need to understand the goals and align people. But that whole notion of finding a mentor, A, it's arguably quick. Not quick the journey, but quick to start. You have someone there in your corner advising you, you know, day over day as you navigate.

But I also like that idea that like selecting someone should fall into that equation of those seven people who are close to you to like rebalance the scales or someone you admire, you know, someone that you aspire to be. And, you know, I do think that sort of, yeah, demonstrated calm assertiveness is a great thing to look for because I learned it by seeing it, you know? I don't think I could read a book, you know? It's well, I, I'm thinking Cesar Millan for some reason, right?

So I read the Cesar Millan book, Train a Dog Using Calm Assertiveness. I don't think that's how I work professionally, but it was the people that I saw in my life, in my career that were able to do it. I respected that a lot because of exactly what you say. I was raised in a way, you know, my dad was more prone to being angry and yelling, and at a certain point in my life, I was like, "I don't really want to be that," but I didn't have anything else to latch onto.

And I like the idea that a mentor serves as that as well, not just transmitting knowledge from their experience from their brain to your brain, but actually, you know, demonstrating behavior that you can model. I think that's really interesting.

But the reason you get into that kind of state usually, and the reason you become emotional in those situations, can often be because we've got too much of our personal self connected to whatever is being engaged with, whatever's being discussed, what- whatever's being threatened. So if your project- isn't going well, that doesn't mean you're not doing well. It doesn't mean you're failing as a person. It doesn't mean any of that.

Take your ego out of this and be… You see these people who get too connected to the work, and they make it part of themselves, and the work is their precious child, and it can never be. Someone can come- Mm … and take that away from you any day. Some sponsor can just turn off the tap and say, "There's no more money for it. Sorry, it's gone." And I've been in those situations. I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen, and hundreds of people have been rolled off the company.

You know, it's happening frequently at the moment. Don't allow your ego to be so connected to the work. If the work isn't going well, that's not a reflection on you necessarily. Be honest with yourself if there's something you can do to improve on, and if there's ways that you can be a better project manager as a result or even just a better corporate citizen, but there's no reason to get upset and angry and defensive just because things start to go wrong.

Is your performance based on all the things or, you know, is it only the things that you can control and influence? And also, you know, what are you doing to react to the environment around you?

Just be ready for that. The first lesson that my mentor gave to me I do mention this and this becomes a recurring thing in the book, is that if you go out knowing it's going to rain, you don't mind so much when you get wet.

What is one piece of advice you'd give to somebody starting to be leading a project team that they don't really have formal authority over, that they might be tempted to just be like, "I'm the project manager. I will command and control you. You do my bidding." What should they do instead?

And, and I inherited a team, and they were good performers, but they also had the rest of their jobs to be doing as well. They weren't dedicated to the project. And what I found was they were getting so far, they were good, and if pressed, they would hand over something that was of good quality.

But too much of the time I was having to make up the difference, and I was having to take their slide right up to the next level, take their communication, their outputs, in some cases policies and procedures, and having to review, find errors, make corrections where necessary, sometimes with time pressures, and it wasn't sustainable.

At the time I did question myself as to I knew something wasn't right, and- Something had to change, but I couldn't really put my finger on what it was until the mentor came in and I saw his way of working, which was to be absolutely action-focused. Some- the habit he had, and I refer to it as tap, tap, tap. We're sitting in meetings, and he comes in, he's tap, tap, tap on his laptop computer, tap, tap, tap.

Every action somebody… Every time somebody says something like, "Yeah, we need to do that," he'd jump in straight away. "Who's doing that, and when are they doing that by?" Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Captured every, everything, so there were no vague promises floating around, no misunderstandings around these things. And then he'd repeat it back e- either at the end of the session or after the session. He'd, he'd share the notes and say, "Have I captured everything correctly here? These are all

the actions." And y- you used to go into meetings capturing two or three big-ticket meeting actions, and he'd be coming out with 20 or 30. And you'd, you'd have your daily stick, it's five or six of them, and you'd think, "Oh." "Did I say that?" And he's "I did say that, and that does have to be done." And then he'd hold you to account on that. So an obsessive drive towards being action and decision-focused, especially in meetings.

Don't go to a meeting without there being any actions to consider or decisions to be made. And if you do go to these meetings, capture every detail that you possibly can from it as well. A lot easier these days with all the AI tools that we've got and the ability to record and transcribe and all that kind of thing, and even do reasoned thinking afterwards as well and analysis on that. You can even get those AIs to analyze your performance in the meetings and let you know how you could do better.

So utilize all of that, but be action and decision-focused at all times, obsessively so. And eventually, what happened is that'll just become normal, and you'll have these massive action logs, but they'll be getting completed quickly because you'll be chasing them up on a regular basis as well, even senior people. And here's a tip for dealing with senior people who take on actions, even if it's people in the C-suite.

You might be tempted to just go tiptoeing around the topic with them when you, when you chase them up and say, "Oh, hello. No, you might recall we had this meeting, and you might have said that you were going to do this." No, no, no, no, no, no, no. "Here's the action you picked up on this date. Can you give me an update please on whether it's completed?" That's all it takes. They're too busy to go filtering through all that nonsense. They don't have the bandwidth to deal with that.

They'll be annoyed with your long prose- … the very simple, to-the-point message. Trust me on that. No more tiptoeing. Be direct. Polite- The direct

But if you're waiting until after the meeting to do that, then you don't have that sort of accountability in the room to be like, "Okay, wait, hold on. Who's gonna own that? You? Okay, great. I'm just gonna jot that down." And then that's like part of the, not contractual obligation, but the agreement, right? A decision has been made that this individual is gonna own that piece or those five pieces, and it's mechanical, but decisions are progress, right? That's how we progress.

Otherwise, you-- we could talk for hours, and then nothing will happen afterwards. So I really, I really like that, and I think that's a great skill for folks who, a-again, right, these misconceptions. If someone was under that misconception that they have been appointed to be the project leader, but all that means is taking notes, and thank God there's an AI note taker, I'll just sit back and do nothing, won't work.

The other thing people do sometimes is when they commit to something, they have an optimism bias, and they think, "Well, on the best possible day, I might be able to get this big piece of work done on, mm, if I have all of Friday with no interruptions."

So ask them to be realistic, and if you think they're being overly optimistic, and if they've habitually been overly optimistic, maybe have that conversation with them and say, "Look, I'm not going to be mad at you if you s- if you think I want to hear you say it's going to take one week, and actually it's going to take two. I'd rather hear it's going to take two."

I wonder, though, you know, if there are any misconceptions or obstacles that might be created by someone who is too fixated on learning by the book. What are the misconceptions around the formal process that sometimes don't fly and are, are the first things that you have to drop when you realize your project actually doesn't follow all of the standards, doesn't, you know, go exactly textbook perfect. The ways of working are a little bit messier and sloppier and dynamic.

What are the things that you see people enter the role and be like, "But I thought I was supposed to do this, this, and this," but it's just, it's not working, and everyone's not doing what I say. And you're like, "Actually, don't worry about that."

It's very focused , so expecting everyone else to just automatically be going along with that, especially if they've had no training themselves on it, you know, it's not going to work. And that's what I, I learned in those early chapters where I was overly reliant on the process. And you see this sometimes where, and you see it a lot in PMOs, when you have a PMO who's never delivered a project, so they know that the rules are this, and they have blind obedience to it.

The rules are this, and it's okay, they'll repeat that. They'll regurgitate that to everybody, but they don't understand the spirit of the rules. They don't understand why that rule is there. They don't understand how to defend it.

So when some very stressed out project manager who's been pushed to their limits for the whole project suddenly snaps back at you, "Why the hell should I do it your way when it's pointless and people don't look at it and they don't look at this piece of the work and they don't care?" And they've got no way to push back against that because they've never sat there and thought it through, why do we really do this?

And, and this blind adherence to the process is one of the greatest dangers a PMO in particular could ever have because you're constantly going to be called on to defend these things. And as a, somebody who's maybe delivered a project, you'll at least have some lived experience and you'll understand, well, in my case, that really helped me learn. Why did I need a stakeholder profile? Well, it really helped me to try to focus in on who these people are.

It's is it a tick boxing exercise so I can get through a stage gate? It's that as well.

Secondly I got a little bit pompous maybe, a tad arrogant that, and I, I just thought, "Well, I know best practice, and I will invoke the words 'This is best practice' every time somebody comes along and says, 'Well, why should I do it your way?' 'So, 'cause it's best practice.'" Like they're magic words, like abracadabra. It's gonna make this person completely change their mind. And yeah, it has the opposite effect.

It, it will entrench them, and those words of power to you are meaningless to them, and you need to learn better arguments. And there's two chapters in the book where, one where I'm actually showing a project manager how to do project planning better, and it really blows her mind because it helps her to express her plan so much better than it was previously, which was a little bit of a mess. And she says, "Everyone

should do it this way." Sure. So the following chapter is me trying to get everyone to do it that way. It does not go well.

And I like what you said, you do need to persuade people to do a thing, and you need to be willing to entertain somebody else's idea that actually might be a really good one. And that's what I found at the time, and I'm like a, you know, PMBOK fifth edition guy, right? So like at the time I was like, "I don't really have a tool

for that. How do I then go and know what I can change and what I, you know, and what I can't change to, to not impact the rest of the project?" Now, you know, there's more dialogue about tailoring, you know, methodologies and, you know, doing things in a more flexible way. But at the time it was just like it didn't compute, and I was like, "Well, that does sound reasonable," but it's not, as you say, best practice, right? Like, how is this gonna go?

There was a, I don't know, a little bit of a buzzword a, a few years ago about having elasticity in your project delivery method where you can… essentially you're more flexible and more able to do different types of projects and in different ways, and that's considered to be a, a benefit to your organization. And it's true. It is true.

But again, having that elasticity without understanding why and why things are important and what they're truly trying to do, rather than just it's a different roadmap entirely, that's really important. You, you miss the point if you don't invest a little bit of thought in that. And flying through a textbook isn't gonna give you that necessarily.

It might do, you know, there's some very good textbooks out there, but I'd suggest that you need some reflective time as well to really absorb what you're taking in and not just cram for the exam. You know, just try to understand it.

I think that is actually something that almost everybody should gain an appreciation of. And to your earlier point, maybe not just by leading projects, maybe just by being part of them and, you know, seeing how they are actually not tidy and not perfect. But I've got this theory I wanted to test with you, this theory that sooner or later, everyone is going to be asked to lead a project.

And, you know, my evidence is anecdotal, and I'm sure you could argue that maybe everyone has led a project in some way, shape, or form. But I'm also looking at all this change in the marketplace in response to things like AI, to macroeconomics, to geopolitics, and it seems like projects are that growth lever that are helping businesses and organizations keep pace with all this change.

And my theory is that projects are gonna grow in number, they're gonna increase in complexity, and they're gonna be staffed by a wide variety of cross-functional talent, you know, subject matter experts who are all gonna be armed with technology right now, namely AI, that helps them work fast. It's gonna make the communication more complicated. It's gonna make the stakes much higher.

And my question to you is, is perhaps this notion of accidentally or informally becoming the project manager starting to be actually less of an accident and more of a rite of passage for all professionals going forward?

There's AI and all these things. I had a manager who, sadly, he's not with us anymore. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago, and I didn't know him particularly well, but on one occasion we went for brunch and he gave me this perspective. I, I don't know where he picked it up from, but I- I'll remember him for the rest of my life for this, which was you get distracted by all these things coming at you so fast, so fast.

And it's like you look at the headlines of the news every day and you'll feel a certain negative way usually. But take a step back. What was the headline for the month? Take a bigger step back. What's the headline for the year? If there's one headline every year, is it saying that things are getting better or is it things are getting worse? And if things are getting worse, is it entirely worse or is it that, are there opportunities in there as well? Is there something good in there?

And keep taking that distant view. And at the time, that really lifted my spirits. We were just coming out of COVID actually when I had that brunch with him. That one stayed with me. So try to take that step back view, and when you are feeling a little bit distracted by all of those external factors, just keep doing that. And I … Even if this year has been a bad year, the whole decade most likely hasn't, the whole century hasn't. So take a number of a step back. Okay, we might be in a dip.

Things will improve.

You know, like day by day it feels like a slog. There's some terrible moments. When you zoom out, you're like, "Okay, well, there was this terrible section, but we started off on the right foot. We'll probably end on the, on the right foot." Zoom out even further and you're like, "What are we doing here, actually?" We're, like, improving lives. Even if it's that, you know, auto email responder for a complaint in a, a customer support portal, that's improving someone's life, you know?

Realizing that they didn't just check a ticket into a, a black hole never to be seen again. It's establishing this dialogue and then, you know, even the sort of misunderstanding of scope was actually building better relationships with customers. And you keep zooming out, zooming out, zooming out, and you're like, "Actually, yeah, we're like progressing. We're making progress through projects." That's me as my with my project management lens.

Projects are changing the world, but genuinely I do think that's true, and I think that's a really good perspective to look at it from and to actually embrace an opportunity if given the chance to lead a project. Even if you are a VP and you're leading your first project, all of these things still apply, right? It's like pause, align, you know, push back where there are opportunities to push back.

Think about what the outcome is, advocate for that, negotiate with your team, support your team, make sure that they're realistic so that we can achieve these goals. And yeah, some days are gonna be better than others, but you're gonna learn so much along the way, and maybe don't do it alone. Maybe find a mentor.

service over there, helping organizations to, firstly, to prioritize the kind of work that they need to really be doing in their project space, and then to protecting it with effective assurance. So yeah, it's big.

I really thought we needed to intervene in Libya, thought we needed to intervene in Syria. I never thought that Russia was gonna go into Ukraine again, and, you know, I, I thought, "Well, no, Iran, the whole thing will be over in a week." So I'm not gonna make any predictions on this. This is not my area of expertise, clearly. Perhaps I judge things on what they should be rather than what they shouldn't be. I don't know, but I'm not very good at predicting that.

But as things currently stand, I have been to Dubai during the conflict, and they seem to be getting on with life as normal, with the exception of every now and again having an alert and sometimes seeing something flying through the sky very fast above them. I'm optimistic for the region and, you know, one of the biggest drivers for me is safety for my children and, you know, their prospects as well.

And from a project perspective, what is really enticing about the area, and this is perhaps the biggest draw for me, almost every project I've been involved with, I'd say certainly for the last decade, has been focused on efficiency And can we squeeze another penny out of this pound, you know? And over there, the focus is on growth and expansion and let's go and do this crazy thing and well, you know. They built a city on spectacle over there. Right, right.

Now they're thinking about trying to integrate the whole city 'cause at the moment they've got all these traffic problems and because I, I think they didn't expect it to be so successful so fast. So they're trying to build communities fast enough to keep up. They're, they're now s- decided they're gonna build a new airport there that's gonna … The, the airport on its own, when it's opened, is going to employ 400,000 people.

At this point in my life, maybe, you know, I'm looking forward to that next adventure. There you go. So hopefully that'll be a successful one. And yes, it will be a project even though nobody said it was.

It, you know, there's projects out there creating net new things, driving innovation, and improving lives, and that is something that folks anywhere in their career who become a project manager or who start leading projects can get themselves stuck into as well.

And I really felt that I missed out on that because that had a, quite a legacy in London. And, you know, rather than just go chasing Olympics around the world, applying the next thing that came along was the creation of a new bank, and that project ended up being canceled. That was the one where, where I mentioned earlier where somebody just said, "No, it's too difficult. We're walking away," and then everybody got let go.

So I want that kind of a legacy project, and until then, it's gonna have to be the books. The books are gonna have to be my legacy or my YouTube channel, but especially the books.